Home is where the heart is
by smaragdbird
Summary: They're going home Slash Boone/Jack


Jack couldn't sleep. The motion of the freighter made him sick and after three years on the island, the mechanical noises kept him up.

Sawyer next him, however, slept like he had slept his whole life on a ship. It was disturbing how unfazed he seemed by, well, everything, but then all of them were asleep as far as Jack could make out in the darkness of the mess.

Jack thought, that maybe he couldn't sleep because he had developed some kind of claustrophobia on the island, since the hallways and the rooms of the ship made him feel locked in, imprisoned., like he couldn't breathe properly. He needed to be on deck, among the sea, the sky and lots of open space.

Careful not to step on the others jack made his way out of the canteen. They freighter hadn't been build to accommodate 48 passengers so most of them slept on the ground in the canteen, while they few free cabins had gone to the families with little children.

When he reached the deck, jack saw that he wasn't the only one who couldn't sleep. Boone leaned against the railing, staring out at the dark water.

'Hey.' Jack said before he came too near. They were all easy to startle, which had caused more than one painful memory.

'Hey.' Boone answered but he didn't turn his eyes away from the dark water.

Jack leaned against the railing next to him, close enough that he elbow touched Boone's. For some reason that only Shannon knew, she had insisted that Boone would share a cabin with her, Sayid and the girls. Girls, plural and Shannon and Sayid had fought enough over one name for their baby, and probably scared off all polar bears to the other end of the island in progress, only to have to come up with a second one.

'We're going home.' Boone said neutrally as if he was talking about the weather.

'We do.' Jack confirmed, although frankly he had no idea what that meant. Three years on an island with polar-bears with only 48 people changed you necessarily. Friendships, relationships, children, Sawyer being downright civil, running from lunatics like Ethan or Danielle, hunting boar, fishing, collecting mangoes and papayas and polar bears bounded them all close together.

And judging by how much he thought about them, jack would probably miss the polar bears the most. Mostly because he couldn't wrap his head around it how polar bears could end up on a tropical island.

'Did you miss it?' Boone asked in the same neutral voice that gave nothing away.

'Home?'

'Yeah.'

It was a good question. What had he left in LA? His job, mostly. A failed marriage, a dead father, some friends he had thought about less and less in the last years. Compared to what he had on the island; leader and doctor of a community of 53 people, Boone, friends like Kate and Sayid and Sawyer; it seemed frighteningly little.

'What about you?' he asked instead of an answer. For all the time he and Boone had been together, they had barely talked about their lives before the plane crash. There were always more interesting things happening on the island that they had talked about.

'I was in love with my step-sister.' Boone laughed humorlessly as if that explained everything. Maybe it did.

There was something hanging between them. A question that Boone didn't ask him and, although Jack could make a good guess what it was he had no idea how to bring it up.

Jack felt his hands grow sweaty and his pulse pick up speed. He felt like he hadn't felt right before opening his mouth and proposing to Sarah, which was ridiculous since he wasn't planning to ask Boone to marry him, or was he? No, Boone didn't even have to move in with him if he didn't want to. They were both from LA anyway, all he wanted to ask Boone that they would see each other again. He didn't want to put to put any pressure on Boone regarding their relationship.

'You know what the first thing I'm going to do when we're home is?' He asked to ease the tension: 'I'll eat a tuna pizza as large as a tire.'

Boone actually laughed and tilted his head sideways so he could look at Jack.

'What about you?'

'Me?'

'Yeah, what are you going to do first thing home?'

'Eat chocolate until my stomach hurts.'

'Care for some company?'

'What about your tuna pizza?'

'Chocolate sounds better.' He brushed a strand of Boone's hair out of his face and asked:

'And what do we do after we ate all the chocolate?'

'We?' Boone turned rather sharply in Jack's direction.

'We.' Jack said firmly, but then relented: 'If you want.'

'I do.' Boone answered.

'Me, too.' Jack said and put his hand over Boone's on the railing. Whatever they had had on the island, Boone wanted to continue it as much as Jack did and that was a pretty damn good feeling. Actually it felt a lot like Sarah saying yes all those years ago.

'We could go to the zoo.' Boone offered with a small amused smile: 'After all the chocolate. Looking at the polar bears. I think I'm going to miss them.'

'Maybe we should tell someone that there are polar bears on that island. They're probably a new species.'

'Do you think someone will believe us?' Boone asked doubtfully.

'No. They'll chalk it off to mass hysteria or PTSD.'

'Wait until someone begins with the monster in the jungle.'

Jack laughed. Now that they weren't on the island anymore, the idea of a monster in the jungle was funnier that it had been before when they had to live with it.'

'I'll miss Jin's fish.' Boone said wistfully. Jack would, too. Jin was an amazingly good cook.

'Maybe you can persuade him to open a restaurant in LA.'

'Boone!' Shannon stormed outside, looking gloriously enraged. With her hair in disarray she looked even a bit frightening: 'where have you been? Paula can't sleep and so she woke Nadia up and Sayid is still sick and can't help me!' She didn't even waste one look at Jack.

'I'm coming, Shan.' Boone gave in. he smiled at Jack and leaned over to give him a kiss, before he followed Shannon back inside.

Jack leaned against the railing again and stared out at the dark water.

They were going home.


End file.
